"Mary, as the mother of Jesus, is documented in Roman catacombs: paintings from the first half of the 2nd century show her holding the Christ Child. Excavations in the crypt of St Peter's Basilica uncovered a very early fresco of Mary together with Saint Peter. The Roman Priscilla catacombs depict the oldest Marian paintings from the middle of the 2nd century: Mary is shown with Jesus on her lap; they are next to a man in a tunic, his left hand holding a book and his right hand pointing to a star over his head, the latter being an Old Testament symbol of messiahs and/or the Messiah." Source: Wikipedia.
The transformation of Mary into a Christian demi-goddess or minor deity seems to have started with the apocryphal Gospel of James, aka The Proto-Gospel or Protoevangelium of James. Thought to have been written sometime during the 2nd century AD, "It tells of the virginal conception of the Virgin Mary, her upbringing and marriage to Joseph, the journey of the holy couple to Bethlehem, the birth of Jesus, and events immediately following. It is the earliest surviving assertion of the perpetual virginity of Mary, meaning her virginity not just prior to the birth of Jesus, but during and afterwards, while defending Jesus against pagan and Jewish accusations of illegitimacy." (Wikipedia)
Jesus' miraculous birth or Immaculate Conception was a common theme in ancient mythology, but the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity leads to various theological difficulties for the Christians who believe in it. According to the New Testament, Jesus had four brothers: James, Joseph (Joses), Judas (Jude), and Simon. (Jesus apparently had sisters as well, but they're not named.) If Mary was indeed a perpetual virgin, this obviously means that all of Jesus' siblings were also sons and daughters of a virgin, so there wasn't anything special about Jesus in this regard. To get around this problem, believers in Mary's perpetual virginity end up having to argue that Jesus didn't have any biological sisters and brothers at all. They all just kind of grew up together or something.
Mary is venerated by Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans and the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches. According to Wikipedia, "this veneration especially takes the form of prayer for intercession with her Son, Jesus Christ." This makes Mary a kind of intermediate deity who along with the other saints and angels can intercede in God's divine council. Mary has considerable powers in her own right, however. She can perform miracles, heal the sick, etc., and when she died, God raised her body into heaven, according to Catholic and Eastern Christian teachings. In another version of this story, she never died at all but was assumed directly into heaven while still alive. The exact nature of her assumption is a matter of theological debate:
"Many Catholics believe that Mary first died before being assumed, but they believe that she was miraculously resurrected before being assumed. Others believe she was assumed bodily into Heaven without first dying. Either understanding may be legitimately held by Catholics, with Eastern Catholics observing the Feast as the Dormition." (Wikipedia)
Note: The Dormition is an Eastern festival which "commemorates the 'falling asleep' or death of Mary the Theotokos ('Mother of God', literally translated as God-bearer), and her bodily resurrection before being taken up into heaven."
There are a couple of problems here. For instance, if Mary is the "mother of God," then who got her pregnant in the first place? And if the Son and the Father are "one substance, essence or nature" did the Son in the form of the Father come down to Mary and give birth to himself? (The doctrine of the Trinity has never made any sense to me).
According to early sources, Mary was what we would now call a child bride:
"Some apocryphal accounts state that at the time of her betrothal to Joseph, Mary was 12–14 years old. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary could have been betrothed at about 12. Hyppolitus of Thebes says that Mary lived for 11 years after the death of her son Jesus, dying in 41 AD." (Wikipedia)
"The earliest extant biographical writing on Mary is Life of the Virgin attributed to the 7th-century saint, Maximus the Confessor, which portrays her as a key element of the early Christian Church after the death of Jesus."
The details of Mary's life are sketchy. So is the date of her death (if it actually occurred) and her resurrection. These are all details, however. The real question is whether she actually existed.
Merry Yule, Saturnalia & (Maybe) Mithra's Birthday
Today is "Christmas," whatever that means. The word comes from the Middle English Christemasse, which is turn comes from the Old English Christes-messe or "Christ's Mass," but it's unclear what the word "mass" actually means here. These days it usually refers to the Eucharist (Holy Communion) and the Catholic mass, but it may have had a different meaning when the first Christmas was celebrated in Rome in 336 AD:
"The English noun mass is derived from Middle Latin missa. The Latin word was adopted in Old English as mæsse (via a Vulgar Latin form messa), and was sometimes glossed as sendnes (i.e. 'a sending, dismission'). The Latin term missa itself was in use by the 6th century. It is most likely derived from the concluding formula Ite, missa est ('Go; the dismissal is made'); missa here is a Late Latin substantive corresponding to classical missio." (Wikipedia)
If this is correct, the word "Christmas" means something more like "Christ's Dismissal" or "Christ's Sending," which may refer to the dismissal or "sending out into the world" of the congregation after the service. Various other explanations have been proposed, but the original meaning of "Christmas" -- like the origin of Christianity itself -- is still kind of hazy.
One thing that isn't hazy is why we celebrate Christmas on Dec. 25 (Gregorian Calendar) even though nobody has the slightest idea when Jesus was born. The date was first adopted by the Western Christian Church, sometime during the first half of the fourth century, because the early church needed to compete with important pagan festivals like the celebration of the winter solstice.
Christmas is a classic example of how the early church Christianized the pagan West by taking over its traditions.
"The Christian ecclesiastical calendar contains many remnants of pre-Christian festivals. Christmas includes elements of the Roman feast of the Saturnalia and the birthday of Mithra. The Chronography of 354 AD contains early evidence of the celebration on December 25 of a Christian liturgical feast of the birth of Jesus. This was in Rome, while in Eastern Christianity the birth of Jesus was already celebrated in connection with the Epiphany on January 6." Source: Wikipedia.
Christmas traditions have deep roots in the ancient pagan world. Take the Christmas tree, for instance. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the Devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime. It survived further in the custom, also observed in Germany, of placing a Yule (1) tree at an entrance or inside the house during the midwinter holidays."
(1) "Yule or Yuletide ('Yule time' or 'Yule season') is a festival historically observed by the Germanic peoples. Scholars have connected the original celebrations of Yule to the Wild Hunt, the god Odin, and the pagan Anglo-Saxon Mōdraniht [Old English 'Night of the Mothers']. ." (Wikipedia)
"Later departing from its pagan roots, Yule underwent Christianised reformulation, resulting in the term Christmastide. Many present-day Christmas customs and traditions such as the Yule log, Yule goat [see next video], Yule boar, Yule singing, and others stem from pagan Yule traditions."
Also see The Symbols of Yule.
In Rome, the period of the winter solstice brought the seven days of the Saturnalia. "Saturn’s great festival, the Saturnalia, became the most popular of Roman festivals, and its influence is still felt in the celebration of Christmas and the Western world’s New Year." (Encyclopedia Britannica).
"The Saturnalia was the most popular holiday of the Roman year," according to the University of Chicago. Catullus describes it as 'the best of days' ... and Seneca complains that the 'whole mob has let itself go in pleasures" ... Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated ... It was an occasion for celebration, visits to friends, and the presentation of gifts, particularly wax candles ... perhaps to signify the returning light after the solstice, and sigillaria [figurines given as traditional presents]."
Everything in Rome came to a stop during the Saturnalia, a festival of licentiousness and role reversals, among other things. According to History Extra, "We say that during Christmas today the whole world shuts down – the same thing happened during the Saturnalia. There were sometimes plots to overthrow the government, because people were distracted – the famous conspirator Cataline had planned to murder the Senate and set the city on fire during the holiday, but his plan was uncovered and stopped by Cicero in 63 BC."
Some Christians see the Saturnalia (and, by extension, Christmas itself) as satanic, which isn't too surprising since Christianity demonized all of the old pagan gods while simultaneously hijacking many of their traditions for their own purposes. In one case, that of Mithra (Mithras) -- the early church's main competitor -- the Christians may have appropriated a pagan god so completely that some have argued that Christ is Mithra in another form.
The identification of Mithra's birthday with Christmas is sketchy. While many sources claim that the god was born on Dec. 25, other sources say that this isn't true and the story seems to be a much later invention. According to Wikipedia, for instance, "It is often stated that Mithras was thought to have been born on December 25. But Beck states that this is not the case. In fact he calls this assertion 'that hoariest of 'facts'. He continues: 'In truth, the only evidence for it is the celebration of the birthday of Invictus on that date in the Calendar of Philocalus. Invictus is of course Sol Invictus, Aurelian's sun god. It does not follow that a different, earlier, and unofficial sun god, Sol Invictus Mithras, was necessarily or even probably, born on that day too.'"
Mithra was said to have been born from a rock (in one version of the story) According to The Mysteries of Mithra, by Franz Cumont (p 131), "the tradition ran that the 'Generative Rock,' of which a standing image was worshiped in the temples, had given birth to Mithra on the banks of a river, under the shade of a sacred tree, and that shepherds alone, ensconced in a neighboring mountain, had witnessed the miracle of his entrance into the world." Like the story of Jesus's birth, the presence of shepherds in the fields suggests that Mithra was born in the spring or summer, not in the dead of winter. Whatever the case, however, the Jesus/Mithra connection is persistent in popular culture:
Related: Sol Invictus and Christmas
One interesting fact about Mithraism is that it appeared in the Roman Empire around the same time that Christianity appeared and seems to have dropped out of sight around the same time that Nicene Christianity became the official state religion of Rome:
"The Roman deity Mithras appears in the historical record in the late 1st century A.D., and disappears from it in the late 4th century A.D.," according to The Tertullian Project. It's tempting to see this as circumstantial evidence that Christianity evolved out of Mithraism, but the truth is that all forms of pagan religion began to fade out after the church consolidated its power in the 4th century. Besides, very little is actually known about the teachings of Mithraism, an "organization of cells," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), whose beliefs have to be reconstructed mostly from inscriptions.
None of this really matters, though. Mithras probably wasn't born on Dec. 25, but then neither was Jesus so what difference does it make? The connections between Christmas, ancient Yuletide celebrations and the Roman Saturnalia are clear, so if you're a pagan you might as well go ahead and celebrate Mithra's birthday today as well. Of course, this assumes that you see Christmas as a religious holiday in the first place. A lot of people don't:
"Most Americans celebrate Christmas, but its importance to people as a religious event continues to wane, according to a new survey by Pew Research." (News & Observer, 2017). Note: this article is now hidden behind a paywall.
"The poll found that while 90 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, only 55 percent regard it as a religious holiday. Further, the survey found, a decreasing majority of Americans believe in the main elements of the Christmas story as told in the Bible: that Jesus was born of a virgin mother; that three magi came to visit, bearing gifts; that an angel announced the baby’s birth; and that the infant was cradled in a manger."
Christmas has become secularized and increasingly commercial, to say the least. The holiday has degenerated into a month-long orgy of rabid consumerism and mass insanity, a typical example of the decline of the modern world. (Next video from 2018)
I have mixed feelings about Christmas. I'm an atheist, I don't believe that Jesus existed and I think that Christianity was a disaster for the Roman Empire and the West in general, but I'm not one of those rabid anti-Christians who protest manger displays and fly into shrieking tantrums every time someone says "Merry Christmas." And while it's obvious that the early (Western) church made Dec. 25 Jesus's birthday in order to hijack a pagan festival, I'm not especially bothered by that fact. I don't get all offended about it and start foaming at the mouth.
I can't stand what Christmas has become, but the holiday is a Western tradition so even though I'm a complete heretic I support the open celebration of the holiday because the West and all of its values and institutions and traditions are under attack by politically-correct vermin. I'd rather see a return to our true pagan roots (something I don't think is possible, by the way), but given the choice between Christianity and, say, Islam or Cultural Marxism or, God forbid, modern neopaganism, I'll take Christianity any day even though I don't believe a word of it.
So Merry Christmas and if saying that offends somebody I couldn't care less.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Barbarians, Catholic Church, Christianity, Commentary, Culture, Paganism, Religion, Videos | Permalink